 And I'm here in my BBG capacity, not my Hudson capacity but I wear both hats because the Broadcasting Board of Governors is a board of presidential appointments, a board that confirmed by the U.S. Senate of people who oversee U.S. government international civilian media, which I'll go a little bit into what that means, and so all of us on the board, and the board is chaired by Jeff Schell, who is an incredible individual, who's the CEO of Universal Film Properties, Universal Pictures, and some of the notable board members include Ryan Crocker, who was the U.S. and was probably the most distinguished U.S. diplomat of the last half century, who was U.S. ambassador to both Iraq and Afghanistan in the last decade or so, and so it's a board of people who are deeply concerned about U.S. public diplomacy, about the U.S.'s image abroad, about the way that we communicate with people in societies that are not free, and so all of us who serve on the board and we meet, though it is a part-time responsibility, it takes a significant amount of time, we meet normally about once a month for a day to a day and a half to discuss matters, and it's been a great honor to serve and I've learned a great deal in my short term of service on the board. So I'm here today to talk about U.S. government civilian international media in what's a rapidly changing geopolitical climate and a rapidly changing media environment, and I think back to my days, I was born in 1961, I grew up, I was a ham radio operator, I was a shortwave buff as probably a number of you were, think back to the old days of the Cold War, when there was Voice of America, there was the BBC, there was Radio Moscow, and the world was fairly clearly divided, you knew who you could trust, you knew who you could believe, and even though the Soviets spent this, and their allies spent a significant amount of time trying to propagate their ideas, their efforts didn't go terribly far. The BBC, and in particular Voice of America and Radio for Europe, really were critical to the dissemination of the ideas of truth and liberty and to propagating Western culture behind the Iron Curtain, and if you talk to the great heroes of the Cold War, the dissidents, whether it was Wachslaw Havel, whether it, in particular, or if you talk to any of the Polish dissidents who talked to Lenca, they will tell you about the time they would sit in their homes listening to Radio for Europe, the Voice of America, listening to the wonderful jazz broadcasts, listening to the news, hearing about the Soviet invasion of their country, and what that meant to them, and what a great source of strength it was that they knew that there was some place in the world that lived in truth, and that could broadcast truth. But we live in a very different, a radically different media environment today. To begin with, Western culture is virtually omnipresent around the globe, there is no Iron Curtain, whether it be rock music, Hollywood, reality, television, you know, just about everywhere with the exception of North Korea, and the proliferation of cable news outlets, and the rise of the Internet also means that Western news is available throughout the world, whether it be the BBC, CNN, the people going online to look at the New York Times, the Drudge Report Time magazine, other outlets. So what is the BBG and why is it needed? So the broadcasting board of governors is an agency of the federal government. We have an annual budget of $721 million, five major networks. The Voice of America, which is our major network, which reports on the U.S. to a world audience and does reporting on world events. Then we have our surrogate broadcasters, and these broadcasters broadcast to places that are, and the Voice of America primarily broadcast to countries that are not altogether free, not altogether stable. Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty, which focuses primarily on Russia, Central Asia, as well as Afghanistan and Iran. Radio Free Asia, which is heard from China to North Korea to Vietnam and Cambodia, and Alhura Media Middle East Broadcasting, which was set up after 9-11, which covers the 22 nations of the Arab world in the Maghreb. The Broadcasting Board of Governors was set up as an institution in sort of the great days of glory, post-Cold War triumphalism, when there was a sense that the public diplomacy role that had been played by an agency called the U.S. International, U.S. Information Agency, which was a sort of, which was a separate bureau of our Foreign Service essentially dedicated to propagating American ideas, American values around the world. It was time to close that agency in the aftermath of the Cold War. And so we took over some of the role that the U.S. Information Agency did with far less money. Now actually, we have this, we have on average over 200 million listeners and viewers each week who tune into our programs, whether it be 25% of adult Iranians who watch VOA Persia via satellite in Iran to North Koreans literally risk their lives in order to listen to our programming about their country to the heroes of Maidan who drew upon Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty for impartial news about their country and who used Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty to spread information about what was going on to the Alhura 7 p.m. newscast in Iraq, which even today is the market leader with a 20% audience there. In addition, we broadcast the Cuba via radio via Marti TV and radio. A lot of our efforts are jammed, but we are increasingly finding new ways to get into Cuba to get information into that island. We face a very competitive media landscape in which audiences are bombarded with options, even though freedom of information is increasingly under threat around the globe. And we're also seeing, as we discussed just before we had a little gathering before, a changing strategic environment in which major world players such as China and Russia are seeking influence through massive investments in their own news networks that have the impure of impartial news outlets. CCTV and RTV are readily available in the U.S. and Europe, even in Africa, which I just visited for the BBG, along with regional powers like Qatar, which plays a significant role in global affairs, as we all know through Al Jazeera TV. Now, the expenses and the resources that these networks have, each of them dwarf what we in the U.S. spend on our official civilian government international media. On top of it, the remarkable innovation and technology that we've seen in recent times from digital radio, the decline of shortwave, rise of FM, the transition to digital radio, the satellite television, the internet, social media to rapidly evolving mobile platforms. It's clear that we're in a very different media environment than we were just a few years ago and a very different environment we were then when you think back to the heydays of this kind of broadcasting of your grandparents listening to shortwave on these big tube sets with the crackly voices and quite broadcasts and the like. We've moved well beyond shortwave in most locales and we face very strict competition for the attention of our audience from both these official outlets like RTV and CCTV, but we also face it from commercial outlets as well, some of whom are Americans such as CNN. The move towards satellite and the move towards mobile has put increasing pressure on us to adapt to what is a very different world and what are different, very different formats for the kind of programs that we do. Ten years ago, the overwhelming majority of our programming was shortwave and it was long format talk shows, the kind of things that one would get from the BBC and hour long programs people would listen to and that is not the way the world works anymore. You can't do hour long chats. Program has got to be as much more, it has become much different, there's just a different pace of conversation on FM and there's a different pace of conversation that occurs on satellite television. Now, just take a quick look at some of the approaches some other countries are taking and here I draw on the scholarship of Shawn Powers of the University of Georgia who's done some research for us at the Broadcasting Board of Governors just to look at what's going on around the world with different media outlets. Qatar is pursuing a localization strategy through Al Jazeera, they're sending reporters around the globe to report on all sorts of conflicts in places frankly that most media outlets don't want to send people to because it is so dangerous and they're developing in Africa, they're developing a real regional base of expertise that Africans are turning to, sometimes unaware of some of the propaganda that Al Jazeera is trying to do. China is trying to lure local audiences through China Radio International, CCTV, also with global stories that have local connections and I was just in Senegal 10 days ago for the Broadcasting Board and I was amazed to see the China Radio International building in Dakar which is for Dakar a huge building and they're spending a significant amount of money to get information out in Africa. Some of it is frankly to their own citizens, they broadcast four hours a day in Chinese because there's so many Chinese workers now in Senegal, they're also a significant number of Chinese workers in Ghana where I also was, the Chinese seem almost omnipresent, they built and gave as a gift to the people of Ghana a massive new defense ministry building and so they're making efforts in trying to improve their own, how they are perceived in Africa and elsewhere. The Russians, the Iranians are focusing on their outlets, RT has launched a new website, Press TV, the Iranian media outlet is now doing Arabic programming in the Syrian dialect, the major Western countries that do these kind of international broadcast, us the French who have got Radio France International and France 24, the Germans of Deutsche Welle, the Brits who've got the BBC, the Japanese and the Australians, we continue to base our international, civilian international media on a commitment to freedom of expression, promotion of a global democratic public sphere and we in the United States on our civilian media outlets, civilian, sorry government international media outlets, government civilian international media outlets, we take a journalistic approach to covering issues, we will present both sides of the story, so we will present the story on Edward Snowden and it will be very different than the coverage you get on our TV where some of Mr. Snowden's disinformation will be played up and there'll simply be criticisms of the United States. We know that a healthy debate is key to a democratic society and we will present both sides of the story and there's some open question as to whether or not that actually serves our public diplomacy purposes. For example in 2009 when the Green Revolution began in Iran, our Persian media outlets, under directive from the Obama administration were told not simply to feature those who were back in the Green Revolution and so there were debates between backers of the regime and backers of the Green Revolution which was disappointing frankly to some who, to many in Iran who hoped that we would take a more vigorous stand in favor of revolution on our, on VOA which has a gigantic reach into Iran. So it's clear that these, that our global strategic competitors, Chinese, the Russians among others, see international broadcasting as key to effective power promotion abroad that it gives them some leverage over our societies and other societies. CCTV spends $2.5 billion a year annually. It's the largest of many of these broadcasters around the globe and it received a $7 billion injection originally to sort of get itself moving and to get itself much more visible. It now, CCTV reaches now over 200 million households today and as I mentioned it was all over the place in Africa when I was there 10 days ago and it's all over the United States CCTV. Al Jazeera, Arabic news operation continues to have a major impact in its own region and elsewhere. We've obviously seen the news the last few days coming out of the Gulf of ambassadors being withdrawn from Qatar and the Gulf Cooperation Council being very, being outright hostile to the Qatari government. Al Jazeera is no longer the monopoly that it once was when it first got started and when it offered a vibrant colorful and often hateful alternative to the dull state-friendly, anti-Western media that was the norm in the Arab world. Al Jazeera's pro-Muslim brotherhood agenda has been exposed but the network is going well beyond this agenda now and has turned into more of a news agency hiring credible journalists and in America they've hired many well-known former network correspondents to boost their brand Al Jazeera America and as I mentioned in Africa they're hiring local reporters to cover stories that don't get coverage in other international outlets. They're launching a UK specific channel shortly. They're launching a Turkish channel in the next 18 months and they're significantly increasing their spending in the United States. RT which is Russian television I know in Washington it's carried on in both English and Spanish on our cable system in Washington. It's carried to 630 million households in over a hundred countries 230 cable operators and it's largely Russian propaganda but not simply and for RT has very biased reporting. We're talking earlier any coverage of the Snowden case they will bring on the most vociferous critics of the United States. They'll bring on people who are you know in the days of the Soviet Union we call them useful idiots people who are who may not be realizing the damage that they're doing to the United States with some of the stands that they that they hold and some people who are you know people who were more mainstream but who are definitely critical of any of any projection of US power already or of US intelligence capabilities but they've also hired they've recently hired Larry King who was one point the king of primetime cable coverage in the United States. He had this program Larry King Live which was on from three decades on CNN at 9 p.m. that was a staple in many homes for many for many decades and so he's now on RT. The other day RT received a bit of an embarrassment when an anchor resigned on air because of shoddy coverage she and distorted coverage she felt over the situation in the Crimea which was an embarrassment to to RT but nonetheless I think all these outlets they're they're trying to feel their way and like as just as Al Jazeera has modified how it covers things so RT has begun to modify we'll modify how it covers things it'll become a more subtle instrument over time save thing with CCTV as they try to keep audiences in western democratic countries and as they try to keep audiences in in less free societies. So we at the BBG in the face of this very changing environment in which there's a lot of money going in in which there is obviously a very dramatic geopolitical context that is rapidly changing with major threats and major issues constantly on the agenda we're primarily about serious news so we report on civil unrest we report on natural disasters human rights abuses politics the global economy and so forth and we're we're not simply as we were we're not largely as we were a tool of American public diplomacy which we were during the Cold War for better or for worse and there's a there's an author named Martha Bales who's just written a new book on this subject there's a journalistic culture that's arisen in in the United States and in the media and one that arose really in the Watergate period of some skepticism of deep skepticism towards government and in this and and and I think the BBG is definitely a lot of our journalists who are mainstream professional journalists who've been many of them have served with the major networks and major media outlets they share some of this view and so they they partake of this culture and so they they believe that fair journalism requires presentation of both viewpoints for better or for worse and so that this this this I think this this this way of presenting the news has many strengths and they get they have some shortcomings as well but that is the way that we cover the news we try to be fair and balanced and it's fair and balanced as we possibly can be but we also are about trying to use every possible means we can to get credible information to audiences who are denied press freedom we have 4 000 journalists working worldwide with us on our five major networks and we're broadcasters in the in the broadest possible sense we're on tv radio laptops mobile devices in more than a hundred countries bringing news and information to audiences in 61 different languages our largest audiences our countries you might not expect in indonesia we have 21 million nigeria over 20 million mexico almost 15 million iran 14 and a half million and in in all these countries we've made major strides in innovative delivery including using affiliates sometimes to get our news out using sms mobile distribution for breaking news and moving as well to other forms of getting the news out as need be in a lot of countries we are news leaders we cover stories that aren't covered in environments that lack press freedom and this is particularly in asia and central asia russia and the still unfree parts of the former soviet union places that and our media coverage is frequently cited by major media outlets around the world because we break our reporters break stories they break stories on the ground constantly and it's and so by exemplifying a free media and free expression we try to help foster and sustain free and democratic societies now the audiences may have access to more media than ever before but limits on press freedom and objectivity play an important role for our networks in the middle east for example tv stations even today with longevity are funded by by wealthy patrons who skew editorial lines even in today in egypt more of the most popular local tv stations people who attract between between half to a two-thirds of egyptians weekly are owned by individuals with ties to the former mubarak regime in iraq the abundance of political funding for media outlets the dearth of commercial advertising makes it very unlikely for non-state media to become editorial independent and that's why we have i think that's one of the reasons for the strength of our alhura channel in iraq where we as i mentioned we have a fifth of the viewers every night for our 7 p.m news which is the place if you're a politician in iraq and you want to make a statement you want to reach a broad audience you go to alhura now social media does provide alternatives but many people outside the gulf don't really have access to it for example in egypt only 70 percent of the population turns to the internet for news each week it's 48 percent in saudi arabia and obviously media norms differ around the globe significantly from what we're used to at home and you just to us in the united states as you hear in ireland is nothing more important than freedom of expression the ability to speak your mind freely is a core principle of american journalism american democracy and we will we will use this core principle at times to to show to shape our programming and try to teach people about how democracy works and how and how free discussion is is helpful to civil society now there are obviously significant challenges our journalists face censorship is one of them threats of detainment and bodily harm as well are quite common i think of the immense courage of our stringers in north korea who risk their lives daily to report for our fa and there are incredible people on the ground there who people will pick up a phone to call in a story which is an amazing thing there one of our journalists in syria bashar fami was reporting from a lepo in august 2012 he and three other journalists he was traveling us were caught across fire one of those journalists was killed another one was kept in prison for three months we still don't know what happened to bashar fami after he was separated from his cameraman in that firefight he's not been hurt from since we fear the worst but we don't know for sure one of our reporters in azerbaijan is now facing an ongoing smear campaign and criminal charges on the heels of her coverage investigative coverage of high-level corruption several of our reporters who were in maydan were beaten bloody as they covered the disobedience in in the ukraine david sadder who is an investigative journalist working for rfe rl and a budin critic who also happens to be a hutsa institute colleague was recently expelled from russia and he isn't he's an investigative journalist he's looking at corruption he's looking at all sorts of underground ties in russia he was the first american reported to be spelled from russia since the end of the cold war so our journalists face deep and significant challenges but even so even with these challenges we continued to do some very very important very critical work that frankly is irreplaceable uh in iran as i mentioned uh our media reaches more people each week uh through television radio on the internet than does the bbc heard a very moving story a couple of weeks back i had breakfast with a with a man who's a political scientist in washington who occasionally goes on the voa pursa service for programs that discuss democracy and he he's he's political theorist by training and he uh wasn't would go on talk about separation of powers talk about how congress functions talk about congressional committees investigations how the white house operates and he had gone to cyprus on vacation last summer and before he went he grew a beer because he knew that he he might be recognized there because there are a lot of iranians and and this is in the in the turkish part of uh cyprus so he he was there with his wife and kids and he goes off to a uh to a to a to a to a turkish bath there and he starts talking to someone and the man says after hearing him for a couple of weeks goes i know who you are and you guys know you don't know and then a couple of minutes that he goes i know exactly who you are you're that guy who's on the voa pursa tv program you talk about the rule of law you talk about the congressional elections the guy was he was flabberg acid he then that evening he went to dinner in the in the hotel resort restaurant sitting on the beach and buffet he sits down with his family all of a sudden within two minutes a massive line of about 40 people formed to talk to him why because people wanted to and wanted to engage they wanted to ask they were just curious about the way that uh american constitutional democracy works and it just shows the deep penetration that our broadcasting has in the deep impact it could potentially have now the iranians try to block our our our broadcast via localized jamming but uh many iranians are very resourceful they use web censorship circumvention tools as well as hidden satellite dishes in order to stay connected to the world elsewhere in the middle east we we we have radio sawa our our radio program we do a 20 minute weekly program free zone which covers elections women's rights and freedom of the press and it's very important talking about women's rights because a lot of the the broadcasting the state-owned broadcasting even in the country's re-reach and the other kinds of media outlets that go into these countries particularly in the muslim world tend not to tend not to focus on women's rights tend not to give encourage women to think of themselves as having rights and the right to make up their minds on critical issues and so this this program free zone is the only arab language radio program broadcasting the read them in the region on freedom and democracy now local content does matter in this marketplace and we've for years voice of america we've done our best when there's dedicated local news and information even when there there are very strict limitations to resources in china we've been at the forefront of reporting breaking news and exclusive stories from inside the country radio free asia was the first to report on the many of the 125 self-immolations of tibetans were protesting beijing's rule and we remain really the definitive source of information in tibet and our programming including the documentary we did fire in the land of snow self-immolation in tibet with broadcast around the world in mandarin tibetan and in english and had strikingly strong viewership uh local and local content matters i'm just in africa and uh as i mentioned before i was in gana and a few days before i arrived there was a a bbc presenter comalad du more who had passed away suddenly at the age of 41 he was the host of a program on the bbc that was dedicated to news from africa and he was a major local celebrity there was three days of funeral ceremonies in akra the ganaean president spoke uh about him he was a a hugely popular figure as i mentioned with this uh this person uh this political scientist who does voa persia our our our people our personalities are well known when they go to these countries uh if they can give the countries allow them in they're also well known in the countries they're not allowed to go in but reach doesn't tell the entire stories of uh broadcasting impact you know we we have to figure out a way to keep our our viewers engaged uh and engage in dialogue on issues that are critical for the united states that we care about and that are critical to promoting democracy and we also have to figure out ways that we're producing content that's not available elsewhere and so we we've been we work to build awareness of us policies and support freedom of speech freedom of expression and so we've used we've now moved to a us bureau model in several markets including indonesia the balkans turkey ukraine and latin america where we work with affiliates to produce voa to place voa programming on other media outlets and so we will serve as the u s bureau for uh programs that have very large uh viewership audiences and so we will if a news reporter in a news broadcast in central america or south america wants to have a watching reporter we will give them a watching reporter essentially free of charge and our journalists our standard trained journalists they're not there to they're present both sides of the story they're not there to present uh official u.s government policies as such but oftentimes just simply presenting the news as it is is a massive improvement over what they're hearing since uh they're oftentimes getting a much more distorted view of uh what we're we're talking about or what's happening in washington so uh let me let me add that uh we uh we we we we cover us policies and democratic pro democratic values through news coverage of live events current affairs reports through newscasts and acquired documentaries and and it's uh it's in our particularly in the middle east we we become of our through alhura and radio sour we become a venue where people go to hear their voices heard without editorial distortion um we have discussion programs magazine shows that feature people from the region in open format discussion uh and uh for example when protesters took the streets in egypt uh in july our cameras were there interviewing people from different camps about their desires for the future of egypt uh and likewise uh when major news events break in the united states alhura will cover these events uh as well and bring news of the united states to the region and we are and they often focus on reports of freedom of on how freedom of religion and tolerance works in the united states there have been major stories on how jews and muslims have celebrated Passover together at a local mosque in surrounding virginia our christians opened up a church in uh berk virginia so that uh muslims would have a place to worship during uh ramadan the kind of news stories that you won't get on other middle east uh media outlets that are trying to to fight religious tolerance and freedom of expression and we also spend a lot of time highlighting human rights and uh freedom of women uh and the rights of women um challenging uh the notion of forced marriages and uh focusing on uh educational opportunities available to women uh as well i should add one of the thing we do is we spend a lot of time on a significant amount of resources and in creating programming to teach people english and this is something that the bbc pioneer was immensely successful and we're finding that there is there's increased interest in speaking english with an american accent and our and our and our uh learning english clips are being used by many language services including kamar indonesian vermice and english to africa uh so there we do an awful lot of things i think some of them we do very well there are some of them that we're doing frankly less well but that we're we're examining as a board and we want to sort of uh do much better we have a a mixed bag of tools in some places traditional radio including shortwave remain strong north korea africa afghanistan in afghanistan we reach 75 percent of the adult population uh but now the use of mobile phones is growing in afghanistan and some 400 000 afghans get sms headlines from our radio for europe radio liberty service to afghanistan at the same time though we can't move entirely to sms or to mobile platforms in afghanistan even if the transition word of a kirk is 60 of the afghan population is is illiterate and so we offer an intelligence voice recognition option to read the headlines to those who can't read it for themselves but it's uh it's it's uh it is a challenge and we need to sort of stay as technologically advanced as possible and one of the most important technological advances that the bbg is at the forefront of is combating internet censorship and this has frankly become one of the most important things we do uh congress just mandated us to spend five percent of our budget in the uh the new appropriation uh for fiscal year 2015 uh on tools to combat internet censorship and it's become a growing part of our budget through we have uh engineers who are opening the internet gateway for audiences in china vietnam iran and many other countries around the world through constant innovation and technological evolution and we partner with some of the biggest names in in technology and the internet on these efforts working with tools like ultra surf and syphon our internet uh our attempts to circumvent internet censorship have provided unfettered access to the internet to individuals throughout the world whose country's filter or outright sensor internet access and the bbg is constantly promoting new and safer versions of these tools uh as they continue to evolve to try to get around the significant uh firewalls that countries like china have put up or they literally have hundreds of thousands of people working to prevent their own citizen from getting uh news and information around the world a lot of times the the services that we've created create shadow ip addresses so that uh the chinese cannot figure out that the that an ip address is coming from someone in china they think it's coming from somewhere else so they can't go out and close that line as it were for people trying to get news and information but we've deployed both small hardware devices software based solutions to hundreds of locations including some of the most internet restrictive environments uh and so uh and we we're constantly getting reports essentially on who is looking at the internet in these countries they basically give us an idea of what needs to be done in order to open up the internet even further to some of these countries and it's it requires a real high level of agility and we're massively expanding these networks or these efforts to focus on mobile and satellite platforms to increase research and development uh china recently for example targeted some of our social media activities some of our our radio free asia and voa personalities had large hundreds of thousands of followers on twitter on facebook and then china began targeting them and so this some so these those platforms became uh essentially not usable for those individuals so we're constantly trying to figure out ways to get around the censorship that countries are doing this is actually i think at the end of the day can be much more effective than the anti jamming efforts we did during the cold war because i think that we will eventually be able to with the right level of investment uh open up the internet significantly for those who wish to have access to free and open democratic societies information and news about their own societies as well let me just sort of conclude i've covered an awful lot of ground and it's been a little bit scattershot but we do an awful lot at the bbg and it's kind of hard to encapsulate it in sort of one sort of it's it's it is it's an awful lot of things we do it doesn't sort of fit into one easy category you know the last few weeks i think have shown we all have learned in case we've somehow forgot this that history has not ended in any uh meaningful way against you know this backdrop of a changing geostrategic environment and pressures uh uh you know from central african republic and molly where the bbg is is setting up new fm transmitters that deal with the rise of uh islamic radicalism and threats to civil liberties and the the danger of threats to the rule of law to what's what's gone on in the maydan we face dramatic changes in the technology forefront of communications where you know web censorship and circumventing it are an extension of longstanding attempts by governments around the world to control information for strategic advantage we we need to take the tools of the 21st century and use them to promote democracy and the rule of law our our news services we're leaders in terms of our audience reach we play a critical role in places where people can't get information otherwise that's fair balance and in part there's a huge thirst for this information uh particularly in countries that have corrupt uh regimes uh regimes that uh take action against civil liberties crack down on uh on a free press uh it's it is a the mission of the bbg uh it's really uh it's really a an important mission it's a it's a fundamental mission to uh promoting democracy to promoting free press uh to promoting human rights and uh it's inspiring to work with many of our journalists who themselves put themselves at great risk uh in in places from molly to northern nigeria berma to bet egypt syria and uh in the face of all these challenges we're trying to stay ahead of a of a global competition to get the word out about american democracy about a free press about the rights of women about human rights and about religious toleration and it's a it is a constant challenge against the very shifting backdrop of uh technological and geopolitical change